Microstuck
by peanut4th
Summary: This is a story about a sacrifice, a survivor, a dreamer, a scapegoat, a link, a remainder, a mask, and an exile. This is a story about the end of the world. This is a story about impossible decisions, grief, and moving on. Mostly, though, this is the story of eight kids playing a video game, and the consequences thereafter.


**Hello, hello. This is a Peanut speaking. Recently I got into ****_Homestuck_****, because ****_Homestuck_** **is extremely awesome. After doing so, this story came to mind, and, subsequently, would not go away. I will say this: I have not stopped Poketalia. Poketalia just needs some time to sit, because it's not really the best... This fic, in fact, will hopefully make me want to update Poketalia more, so don't panic if you're one of that fic's fans? **

**Anyway, some warnings: this will likely be significantly darker than Poketalia at some points. It won't crop up as much in the beginning, but, while the story ****_will_**** be doggedly light-hearted and silly, it will often drop the silliness for the heavier topics that might come up. It won't be quite as episodic as Poketalia currently feels. There will be some cursing and some violence, occasionally reaching higher levels- hence the "T" rating. There will not, however, be physical relationships, or even much shipping at all- this story stars children, after all. It will also be in second-person, as a nod to Homestuck. Some people abhor reading second-person narration, so you can leave now if you don't particularly like that!  
**

**I plan to make this as understandable as possible for non-fans of _Homestuck_ and non-fans of _Hetalia_, so if anything ever needs clarifying, you simply have to ask. I will probably need to write into this some, so later chapters will hopefully be better (especially as the _Homestuck_ requisite early-game gags will be out of the way). Naturally, spoilers for both fandoms, though Hetalia doesn't really have spoilers and this story will not follow _Homestuck_'s plot so most things won't be spoiled.**

**Finally, insert the site's fancy legal disclaimer here, as I am not a lawyer and not qualified to write one.**

**Sorry for the rambling note. They shall be much shorter from now on. Now, onto the story!**

* * *

_proudly presenting:**  
**_**MICROSTUCK,**_**  
**(so may we all meet again,  
in better times, we'll be less broken.)_

* * *

_It is time for me to tell you a story, a story about how a universe dies, how a universe is created. It is a little story, a story, at its heart, about children._

_It is about many other things as well, and it is actually quite complex after a time. Really, though, it is simple at heart. Most things are, I've found, and most things are best when told carefully._

_Maybe I could tell you who the Dreamer, the Tie, the Mask, the Remainder, the Survivor, the Exile, the Scapegoat, and the Sacrifice are. Maybe I could tell you how those names come to be. Maybe I could tell you who they are, what they represent. Maybe I could tell you everything._

_But it's much better to learn for yourself, isn't it?_

_Now... who are you?_

**| enter name |**

It is the third of November, and a boy sullenly sits alone in a room with metal walls. The ocean laps around outside. He looks to be no older than twelve, and has huge eyebrows that match his messy blonde hair. What is this boy's name? "Bratty Upstart"?

Try again, numbnuts.

"Peter Kirkland"? That's better. You are Peter Kirkland, also known as the Principality of Sealand. You are a little more than seventy years old if you count how many years you've lived, a little more than forty-five years old if you count how long you've been a declared nation, and a little bit more than twelve years old if you only count how mature you are. You are what is known as a "micronation", though you are determined to become a recognized nation and lose that status someday. You have a variety of interests. You enjoy sneaking into meetings, swimming, playing video games, hanging out with your group of friends, and playing around online. You also enjoy bothering your older brother, That Jerk England. You really enjoy hanging out with your relatively new family, especially Dad Sweden.

As it so happens, you are doing none of those things right now.

In fact, you are sulking on your bed. You got yourself grounded. Dad Sweden and England had agreed that, last time at the World Meeting, the self-dubbed "Amazing Nations' Table" had caused too much trouble. Most of that was Prussia's fault, you contend. Why does he even sit with you all, anyway? After all, Germany had only banished him to that place for a few years after the infamous water balloon incident. The other nations even called the place the "Phony Nations' Table"! But he sat with you anyway, and he was pretty funny, so it didn't really matter!

Anyway, you and the rest of the table may or may not have gotten Ladonia to hack into the UN's security cameras, and, upon seeing nothing getting done, allowed Prussia to go into the room to try to make more nothing get done. It hadn't done much but get you all yelled at, though, and grounded to your own territory for the next month or so. (Technically, they had made an exception for you. In two weeks, you were still going to go to Dad Sweden's house, which was great! You really didn't like being without him for too long.

Luckily for you all, a brand new, super-awesome video game was supposed to come out soon, and you were going to play it with as many of your friends as you could! It was a game called _Snation_. When you thought about it, the game had a very silly name. No one knew much about it. Apparently, it is supposed to be some sort of sandbox game set in the real world! Unfortunately, you have to wait for a helicopter to arrive if you want to play it. Getting the mail while in your territory is kinda annoying, now that you think about it. You should probably set up a better system. You don't really have a choice otherwise for now, though, so you'll deal with what you have.

You wander out of your room. Michael and his family aren't on Fort Roughs right now, instead being in their home in England. The halls echo as you wander alone through them, trailing behind a feeling of rust and concrete. As you step outside, a whispering, life-filled sea wind brushes against you. The waves lap against themselves and the concrete foundation of Fort Roughs below you. Seagulls cry around you. You are surrounded by life, but you are alone, like it is the destiny of a micronation to be for most of their life, until they are accepted, fall into sickness, or die. But you aren't entirely alone. Not really. So it will all be okay! The clouds roll on above you, the sun giving them an odd, firey glow.

You love it here, but sometimes you feel trapped in this small place. Trapped as a little micronation, stuck, unmoving. You want to change the world, but first you have to be recognized, you have to grow up. You can't stay stuck like this forever, not in this way that almost borders on titular.

_"We ourselves feel that what we are doing is just a drop in the ocean. But the ocean would be less because of that missing drop."_

You're going to guess that it was Ghandi that said that. Maybe? It was somebody cool like Ghandi, at least...

You notice your phone ringing inside of of your sylladex.

Your sylladex... You actually have no idea what you're doing with this thing. You started using this sylladex thing when it showed up not two weeks ago. At times, it was highly useful, as it acted as fairly effective hammerspace. On the other hand, needlessly complex inventory systems were just weird. It legitimately made no sense whatsoever, especially after you realized that the cards and the modus were both somehow physical objects and abstractions. Also, you could captchalogue the capchalogue cards. Captchaception!

Your fetch modus is actually ridiculously confusing, but you've gotten used to it, a little. You open it up. All of your cards with items captchalogued in them are stored on a coordinate plane. You just have to call out the coordinates to get the items out! You haven't quite figured out how the system decides what coordinates to store items on yet, though. You're fairly certain that the x-value is determined by the sum average of the place value in the alphabet of the item's name. Interestingly, if the value of the letters is somewhere above 180, it just starts subtracting each letter that goes above that value, and if it would drop below 180 again after that, it goes back to adding. Also, it alternates negative and positive values, though you think you can change that if you want to.

The y-values always seem to have rather random values. It says that they're based off of the planet you're on times the number of players around you when you captchalogue the item, but you actually don't know what that means? When you're hanging out by yourself, it switches between any number from one to ten. When you're hanging out with other people, it never seems to make any sense? Also, it seems to decide whether the number is negative or positive based off of whether there are more "active" or "passive" people around you? You actually have no idea what that means? When you're by yourself, it's always positive, though.

Also, despite your massive amount of potential storage space (something like 18,000 possible coordinates!), you apparently only have something around ten captchalogue cards. So that's annoying.

You close your modus again. You just wanted to make sure that you had the coordinates right. It would have been embarrassing to call out the wrong numbers and send your phone launching into the ocean. "52, 4," you say clearly. Your phone falls out of your sylladex. It lands on the deck of the fort with a loud clang.

You really should just catch that next time...

You pick it up. One of your friends is pestering you on Pesterchum, this cool chat client you found recently!

\- paintedLady [PL] began pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:43 -

PL: Peter?  
PL: Peter, are you there?  
AE: yep im here, just had to get my phone out of my sylladex.  
AE: that thing is way too confusing sometimes, but simultaneously awesome.  
AE: i wonder if that means that i'm becoming an older nation now? they do seem to pull things out of nowhere occasionally...  
PL: ...I see. I don't know. My brothers have never mentioned anything like that.  
PL: Personally, I don't see why you bother with messing with your sylladex. Yours is much more complex than mine, and mine isn't very easy.  
AE: im just really curious! we all got ours at about the same time, so maybe more people are recognizing us?  
PL: I don't think that really matters right now.  
PL: Besides, anyone that we could ask about it is currently at the World Meeting.  
AE: way to remind me about that. it sucks, being grounded!  
PL: I'm grounded as well, Peter. Don't complain.  
AE: i know, but i was really looking forward to seeing all of you and moving closer to recognition!  
PL: I also don't think thats ever really helped.  
AE: quiet. stop being reasonable.  
PL: In any case, I was just wondering if you had received your copy of that "Snation" game you were so excited about.  
AE: nope.  
AE: i havent heard a helicopter or a boat, at least.  
PL: That's too bad. I've received my copies already, but I remember somebody shouting that "i have first dibs!" or something to that effect.  
AE: well, yeah... i do still have first dibs! im sorry i have to make you wait, though...  
PL: It's alright. Your game should arrive soon, anyhow.  
PL: In the meantime, I'm going to look up walkthroughs and similar information.  
AE: but thats basically cheating!  
AE: it ruins the part of the game where we build up our own territory!  
AE: we immerse ourselves and learn about ourselves in the process!  
AE: we grow as nations!  
AE: it ruins the adventure!  
PL: Peter.  
PL: You're being ridiculous. It's a building game, not an adventure.  
PL: A game that does not come with a manual, let me add, and gives you absolutely no hints on what you're supposed to be doing.  
AE: fiiiine.  
AE: go look up your walkthroughs then, i guess.  
PL: Thank you, Peter.

\- paintedLady [PL] ceased pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:53 -

Well, that was nice. You smile. You always like talking to your friends, and, being grounded, this online chat is better than not seeing them at all. Of course, a client like Skype or Facetime might be better, but your smartphone is rather old and Skype never works from where you are, anyway. You have to use satellite internet access in order to access the internet, after all. It's not like running a cable into your territory is something a company would actually do. As a result, your access is often spotty.

Actually, why does your phone work at all? You've never thought about it, but how do you have a cellular signal in the middle of the Atlantic Ocean? You look down at your phone. Two bars. Huh. Weird. You finally stick that aside as a nation thing or something, or at least something to do with geostationary satellites. It would be bad if you didn't have one. You'd have next to no emergency communication in that situation. Still, as you put your phone (-52, 7) back in your sylladex, you can't remember how or why you had any cellular communication. Part of that was because you'd communicated mostly by radio for a large part of your life.

Radio is awesome, by the way. You like TV and movies too, but radio is way cooler. Everyone should listen to radio stations.

Wait. You're pretty sure that you hear something now... Yes! That's the sound of a helicopter!

You wait for the flying vessel to land on the helipad before running up to it. You knew exactly what had to be in your mail, and that was really exciting! You could even forgive the fact that the mail all had to be relayed through email and transported to Fort Roughs without an actual mail courier. You were going to get it! You were going to get your game!

A man sighs in the pilot's seat and gestures to his copilot, muttering about how weird this job is. You don't really pay attention. It often freaks people out, seeing a little kid on the fort alone. Except, you weren't that little! You were over seventy years old! Sort of! (For a country, you suppose that might make you little- certainly much littler than Seborga, even- but you don't think that's relevant at the moment.) You excitedly grab the few letters and the two brown envelopes from the copilot, cheering and thanking them for bringing you your package. This is going to be _awesome_.

Running down from the helipad, you hear the helicopter taking off again as you put your mail (35, 9) and your _Snation_ installation disks (-44, 3) into your sylladex. You suddenly feel like that should have been much harder than it was, with you vaguely fighting a lively fight against some sort of guardian, some cakes, and a lot more sylladex trouble. You have no idea why. Even for you, that's a little absurd!

At any rate, you want to get back to your room and your actual computer as quickly as possible! You want to play your game, after all! You dash down the hallways again (and it hits you that you're utterly alone as helicopter blades recede in the distance, but your friends are chatting and will be playing soon and your Dad is just a call away and, loath as you are to admit it, Jerk England isn't far, so that's totally fine). You make it to your room and pull your _Snation_ installation disks ("negative 44, 3!") out of your sylladex without real incident.

This feels far easier than it should be.

You decide you should probably tell your friends that you've got the game now, so that you can start to play! You take a moment to get your phone out of your sylladex. You pause. As ridiculous and convoluted as your sylladex is (and it's very ridiculous and convoluted, even compared to everyone else's), you have to admit that saying that sounds awesome.

What's this? It seems that, while the helicopter was being loud, a few more of your friends tried to contact you. Whoops...

\- independentArtist [IA] began pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:07 -

IA: Peter.  
IA: The game will start soon.  
IA: I want to talk to you.  
IA: This game is art.  
IA: Important art.  
IA: Peter.  
IA: You are retrieving the envelopes are you not.  
IA: I am not going to contact you am I.  
IA: I will talk to you later.

\- independentArtist [IA] ceased pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:13 -

Now you feel a little bad. He clearly thought he had something important to play. He's always a little like that, somewhat tired and short-sentenced, as well as rather out there and artsy. Still, when he talks about things like that, you know they're important. You resolve to reply as soon as you get into the game.

And now for your other friend...

\- sculptedBinary [SB] began pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:29 -

SB: Peter!  
SB: Why haven't we even started yet?  
SB: I'm really bored since i'm grounded you know.  
SB: It's supposed to be a fantastic computer game.  
AE: oh hi!  
AE: sorry. i just got the game. well start playing soon, i promise.  
SB: You'd better, peter!  
AE: i will! im about to install it now, except you started trying to talk to me and i still have one more person to talk to.  
SB: Stop being so slow!  
AE: its not my fault that i live on a sea fort!  
SB: It is dingbat.  
SB: It is entirely your fault.  
AE: shut up.  
AE: im just going to go install the game now.

\- sculptedBinary [SB] ceased pestering atlanticEmperor [AE] at 14:34 -

God he's annoying. Half the time, you don't even know why you're friends. Then you remind yourself that you're both still cool, even if he is really, really annoying.

You need to get going. You quickly make the final arrangements that need to be made before putting the disk labeled "client" into your computer.

\- atlanticEmperor [AE] began pestering paintedLady [PL] at 14:36 -

AE: hey!  
AE: ive got the game ready!  
AE: im installing it now!  
PL: Oh, you are?  
PL: Good! I'll install the server player, and then we can begin!  
PL: Though, Peter... none of these walkthroughs are very informative. Are you sure you want to do this? It might be frustrating.  
PL: A lot of these walkthroughs seem to get rather emotional at the end, though I haven't read through all of them.  
AE: dont worry!  
AE: my entire life is kinda frustrating sometimes, and ive played plenty of games that give you no good guidance.  
AE: ive played some truly awful text-command rpgs, for example.  
PL: Okay.  
PL: I'm ready when you are.

You're pretty ready yourself. You open up the _Sland_ installation set. A screen appears.

**| Peter: Press enter. |**

You press enter.

A spirograph appears, and then, in a twisted, clouded loading screen, the game begins (everything changes).

AE: alright, its loading  
AE: wait, hold on, my internets being weird. my computers working fine so ill just pester you from there once the game loads  
AE: there it is!

\- atlanticEmperor [AE] began pestering paintedLady [PL] at 14:43 -

It's going to be _awesome._


End file.
